Apple Alums Give Home Thermostats a New Twist 25 October 2011, by Glenn Chapman

Apple alums give home thermostats a new twist 25 October 2011, by Glenn Chapman

Nest Labs, a startup founded by former Apple Inspiration for Nest came when Fadell was building engineers, hopes to do for home thermostats what an environmentally-friendly home in Northern their former employer did for smartphones -- make California and discovered that thermostat them hip and intuitive. technology was stuck in a bygone era.

The startup came out of stealth mode on Tuesday "Tony has always had green interests," Charlton to unveil the Learning Thermostat, which can be said. "He knew we could do better than what was taught to maintain its owners' precise comfort level out there and pulled together a team to do it." after a week or less of use, saving energy lost through manual adjustment. The sleek, disk-shaped thermostat is controlled by turning an outer ring. A black display screen "We created the world's first learning thermostat," showing the temperature turns blue to indicate Nest vice president of marketing Erik Charlton said cooling or red to show rooms are being heated. while giving AFP an early look at the device. Machine learning built into thermostats lets them "You interact with it for a few days and it programs adapt to patterns in homes within a week of regular itself to your schedule," he said. "You don't have to use. The more users adjust their Nest thermostats, touch it again." the more precisely the devices learn preferred comfort levels in homes. Nest co-founder Tony Fadell is a former senior vice president of the Apple division behind iPods and "There is an enormous amount of computing power iPhones. Fellow co-founder Matt Rogers was a built into it," Charlton said. lead iPod software engineer working with Fadell at Apple. Sensors in the thermostat assess whether lights are on or there is movement, determining when Rounding out the staff is Nest's vice president of people are away and then shifting to energy-saving technology Yoky Matsuoka, once head of settings. innovations at Google, and vice president of operations Johnny Gilmore, formerly a general A green leaf appears on-screen to prompt users to manager at Sling Media. save energy and money by altering their usual thermometer setting by a barely noticeable degree. "Ten million thermostats are sold every year and there has been little innovation since the 1950s," Learning Thermostats also tell people how long it said Charlton, who headed computer mouse will take to get rooms to desired temperatures, marketing at Logitech before joining Nest. "We are letting them assess whether they will be home long changing that." enough to justify the process.

The company began taking US orders online at "It turns out that the thermostat controls half the nest.com for the thermostats, which were priced at energy in the home," Charlton said. $249 each. The devices begin shipping in November. Nest thermostats have Wi-Fi connectivity to link up to the Internet, and a free iPhone application lets "We believe this will pay for itself within a year," people manage home climates from afar or mine Charlton said. data about energy used for heating or cooling.

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"They are iPhone guys, so we had to have a cool app for it," Charlton said.

An application to connect with Android-powered mobile gadgets will be released a couple of weeks after Learning Thermostats launch.

Nest is based in the Northern California city of Palo Alto and began the thermostat project 18 months ago. The startup has a team of about 100 people.

The roster of investors in the startup includes Silicon Valley heavyweights Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

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